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Category: Awards

  • NIH Awards $50.3 Million for “Multi-Omics” Research on Human Health and Disease

    NIH Awards $50.3 Million for “Multi-Omics” Research on Human Health and Disease

    Tuesday, September 12, 2023

    NIH awards $50.3 million for “multi-omics” research on human health and disease

    The National Institutes of Health is establishing the Multi-Omics for Health and Disease Consortium, with approximately $11 million awarded in the consortium’s first year of funding. The new consortium aims to advance the generation and analysis of “multi-omic” data for human health research.

    Multi-omics refers to a research approach that incorporates several “omics” data types derived from different research areas — such as genomics, epigenomics, transcriptomics, proteomics and metabolomics. Each of these data types reveals distinct information about different aspects of a biological system, and leveraging all these data types at once is becoming increasingly possible with advances in high-throughput technologies and data science. 

    The integration of multiple types of data from an individual participant’s biological sample can provide a more holistic view of the molecular factors and cellular processes involved in human health and disease, including untangling genetic and non-genetic factors in health and disease. Such an approach offers great promise in areas such as defining disease subtypes, identifying biomarkers and discovering drug targets.

    “Beyond gaining insights into individual diseases, the primary goal of this consortium is to develop scalable and generalizable multi-omics research strategies as well as methods to analyze these large and complex datasets,” said Joannella Morales, Ph.D., a National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) program director involved in leading the consortium. “We expect these strategies will ultimately be adopted by other research groups, ensuring the consortium’s work will have broad and long-lasting impacts for clinical research.”

    Approximately half of the awarded funds will support the work of six disease study sites, which will examine conditions such as fatty liver diseases, hepatocellular carcinoma, asthma, chronic kidney disease and preeclampsia, among others. The sites will enroll research participants, at least 75% of whom will be from ancestral backgrounds underrepresented in genomics research. The sites will also collect data on participants’ environments and social determinants of health to be used in conjunction with the multi-omics data. Combining the multi-omic and environmental data can offer an even more comprehensive view of the factors that contribute to disease risk and outcomes.

    Specimens provided by participants will be processed at the omics production center, which will use high-throughput molecular assays to generate genomic, epigenomic, transcriptomic, proteomic and metabolomic data that will be analyzed to generate molecular profiles of disease and non-disease states. The data analysis and coordination center will then incorporate all of these data into large, organized datasets that will be made available to the scientific community for further studies.

    “Multi-omics studies are at the forefront of biomedical research and promise to advance our understanding of disease onset and progression,” said Erin Ramos, Ph.D., M.P.H., deputy director of NHGRI’s Division of Genomic Medicine. “All while potentially providing important clues for treatment design and drug-discovery efforts. This new consortium is an important step in making those advances a reality.”

    Approximately $50.3 million will be awarded to the consortium over five years, pending the availability of funds. The award is funded jointly by NHGRI, the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS).

    Multi-Omics for Health and Disease Consortium

    Disease study sites and principal investigators

    • Louise Laurent, M.D., Ph.D., University of California, San Diego
    • Krzysztof Kiryluk, M.D., Columbia University — New York City
    • Stephanie Christenson, M.D., University of California, San Francisco — co-funded with NIEHS
    • Vaia Lida Chatzi, M.D., Ph.D., University of Southern California Keck School of Medicine — Los Angeles — co-funded with NIEHS
    • Tanika N. Kelly, M.D., M.P.H., Tulane University — New Orleans — co-funded with NIEHS
    • Joseph McCormick, M.D., University of Texas Health Science Center — Houston — funded by NCI

    Omics production center and principal investigator

    • Gary J. Patti, Ph.D., Washington University — St. Louis

    Data analysis and coordinating center and principal investigator

    • Zhiping Weng, Ph.D., University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School — Worcester — co-funded with NCI

    The National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) is one of the 27 institutes and centers at the NIH, an agency of the Department of Health and Human Services. The NHGRI Division of Intramural Research develops and implements technology to understand, diagnose and treat genomic and genetic diseases. Additional information about NHGRI can be found at: https://www.genome.gov/.

    About the National Institutes of Health (NIH): NIH, the nation’s medical research agency, includes 27 Institutes and Centers and is a component of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. NIH is the primary federal agency conducting and supporting basic, clinical, and translational medical research, and is investigating the causes, treatments, and cures for both common and rare diseases. For more information about NIH and its programs, visit www.nih.gov.

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  • NIH Awards $4 Million Grant to Improve Health in Diverse Communities

    NIH Awards $4 Million Grant to Improve Health in Diverse Communities

    ATLANTA – Many Black communities in Metro Atlanta face high levels of environmental exposures that can negatively impact the health of Black children, and scientists are faced with the challenge of effectively communicating the dangers of environmental exposures to diverse communities. To address these issues, the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), has awarded a $4 million, five-year grant to support research related to addressing health disparities through transformative communication strategies.  

    With this grant, an Emory-led team of environmental health scientists and health communication experts from the University of Georgia will join forces to translate important environmental health research findings to key stakeholders in the community, academia and health care systems through the newly created Center for Children’s Health Assessment, Research Translation and Combating Racism. The Center will develop high-impact messaging strategies that can be used to improve children’s health by focusing on health literacy and best practices in prevention communication and dissemination.  

    Faculty from the Rollins School of Public Health and Spelman College, one of the nation’s most prestigious historically black colleges for women, will also play a critical role in advancing the science generated by the Center and ensuring meaningful discussions and rapid feedback between a community advisory board and all members of the Center.   

    Linda McCauley, dean, and professor at Emory University’s Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing will direct the new Center.

    “This Center is uniquely positioned to foster excellence in research on children’s environmental health that will nurture the next generation of scientists and provide information that can benefit the Atlanta community, which has suffered from decades of environmental racism and has many of the highest levels of health disparities in the nation,” says McCauley. “Our goal is to improve the health of children, and we know better communications will lead to prevention and early detection of environmental health exposures.”  

    “We hope to expand the public health impact of children’s environmental health science by synthesizing existing research into innovative health communication interventions, curricula and policies,” says Center co-director Sun Joo (Grace) Ahn, associate professor at UGA’s Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication. “Together, we will identify target audiences among marginalized and under-resourced populations and design innovative health messages that can help us better communicate with audiences that have traditionally been challenging to reach.”  

    The Center will also partner with Sharecare, the digital health company whose comprehensive and data-driven virtual health platform helps people, providers, employers, health plans, government organizations and communities optimize individual and population-wide well-being by driving positive behavior change.

    Donna Hill Howes, RN, MS, chief nursing officer and SVP, corporate partnerships of Sharecare, commented, “Increasing access to information about children’s environmental health is critical to building strong, healthy communities. Working closely with our partners at Emory, UGA and the Center, we believe that, together, we can effectively support the translation of health science to action-oriented information by leveraging our content and products, connecting stakeholders across fields and utilizing our national reach to augment children’s environmental health.”  

    Emory is one of six academic institutions in a network of Children’s Environmental Health Research Translation Centers in the U.S., and it will serve as the National Coordinating Center for the network. The Coordinating Center will be led by Nsedu Obot Witherspoon, executive director of the Washington, D.C.-based Children’s Environmental Health Network. Other Centers were awarded to Johns Hopkins University, Oregon State University, the University of Pennsylvania, New York University and the University of Southern California.  

    Research reported in this publication was supported by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences of the National Institutes of Health under Award Number P2CES033430. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.    

    About the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS)
    NIEHS supports research to understand the effects of the environment on human health and is part of the National Institutes of Health. For more information on NIEHS or environmental health topics, visit www.niehs.nih.gov or subscribe to a news list.  

    About the National Institutes of Health (NIH)
    NIH, the nation’s medical research agency, includes 27 Institutes and Centers and is a component of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. NIH is the primary federal agency conducting and supporting basic, clinical and translational medical research, and is investigating the causes, treatments and cures for both common and rare diseases. More information about NIH and its programs is available online. 

  • NIH Awards Nearly $75m to Catalyze Data Science Research in Africa

    NIH Awards Nearly $75m to Catalyze Data Science Research in Africa

    Tuesday, October 26, 2021

    NIH awards nearly $75M to catalyze data science research in Africa

    Data scientists at work.

    BBC

    The National Institutes of Health is investing about $74.5 million over five years to advance data science, catalyze innovation and spur health discoveries across Africa. Under its new Harnessing Data Science for Health Discovery and Innovation in Africa (DS-I Africa) program, the NIH is issuing 19 awards to support research and training activities. DS-I Africa is an NIH Common Fund program that is supported by the Office of the Director and 11 NIH Institutes, Centers and Offices.

    Awards will establish a consortium consisting of a data science platform and coordinating center, seven research hubs, seven data science research training programs and four projects focused on studying the ethical, legal and social implications of data science research. Awardees have a robust network of partnerships across the African continent and in the United States, including numerous national health ministries, nongovernmental organizations, corporations, and other academic institutions.

    “This initiative has generated tremendous enthusiasm in all sectors of Africa’s biomedical research community,” said NIH Director Francis S. Collins, M.D., Ph.D. “Big data and artificial intelligence have the potential to transform the conduct of research across the continent, while investing in research training will help to support Africa’s future data science leaders and ensure sustainable progress in this promising field.”

    The University of Cape Town (UCT) will develop and manage the initiative’s open data science platform and coordinating center, building on previous NIH investments in UCT’s data and informatics capabilities made through the Human Heredity and Health in Africa (H3Africa) program. UCT will provide a flexible, scalable platform for the DS-I Africa researchers, so they can find and access data, select tools and workflows, and run analyses through collaborative workspaces. UCT will also administer and support core resources, as well as coordinate consortium activities.

    The research hubs, all of which are led by African institutions, will apply novel approaches to data analysis and AI to address critical health issues including:

    • Scientists in Kenya will leverage large, existing data sets to develop and validate AI models to identify women at risk for poor pregnancy outcomes; and to identify adolescents and young healthcare workers at risk of depression and suicide ideation.
    • A hub in Nigeria will study SARS-CoV-2 and HIV with the goal of using data to improve pandemic preparedness.
    • In Uganda, researchers will advance data science for medical imaging with efforts to improve diagnoses of eye disease and cervical cancer.
    • Scientists in Nigeria will also study anti-microbial resistance and the dynamics of disease transmission, develop a portable screening tool for bacterial infections and test a potential anti-microbial compound.
    • A project based in Cameroon will investigate ways to decrease the burden of injuries and surgical diseases, as well as improve access to quality surgical care across the continent.
    • From a hub in South Africa, researchers will study multi-disease morbidity by analyzing clinical and genomic data with the goal of providing actionable insights to reduce disease burden and improve overall health.
    • A project in South Africa will develop innovative solutions to mitigate the health impacts of climate change throughout the region, with initial studies of clinical outcomes of heat exposure on pregnant women, newborns and people living in urban areas.

    The research training programs, which leverage partnerships with U.S. institutions, will create multi-tiered curricula to build skills in foundational health data science, with options ranging from master’s and doctoral degree tracks, to postdoctoral training and faculty development. A mix of in-person and remote training will be offered to build skills in multi-disciplinary topics such as applied mathematics, biostatistics, epidemiology, clinical informatics, analytics, computational omics, biomedical imaging, machine intelligence, computational paradigms, computer science and engineering. Trainees will receive intensive mentoring and participate in practical internships to learn how to apply data science concepts to medical and public health areas including the social determinants of health, climate change, food systems, infectious diseases, noncommunicable diseases, health surveillance, injuries, pediatrics and parasitology.

    Recognizing that data science research may uncover potential ethical, legal and social implications (ELSI), the consortium will include dedicated ELSI research addressing these topics. This will include efforts to develop evidence-based, context specific guidance for the conduct and governance of data science initiatives; evaluate current legal instruments and guidelines to develop new and innovative governance frameworks to support data science health research in Africa; explore legal differences across regions of the continent in the use of data science for health discovery and innovation; and investigate public perceptions and attitudes regarding the use of data science approaches for healthcare along with the roles and responsibilities of different stakeholder groups regarding intellectual property, patents, and commercial use of genomics data in health. In addition, the ELSI research teams will be embedded in the research hubs to provide important and timely guidance.

    A second phase of the program is being planned to encourage more researchers to join the consortium, foster the formation of new partnerships and address additional capacity building needs. Through the combined efforts of all its initiatives, DS-I Africa is intended to use data science to develop solutions to the continent’s most pressing public health problems through a robust ecosystem of new partners from academic, government and private sectors.

    In addition to the Common Fund (CF), the DS-I Africa awards are being supported by the Fogarty International Center (FIC), the National Cancer Institute (NCI), the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI), the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB), the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research (NIDCR), the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), the National Library of Medicine (NLM) and the NIH Office of Data Science Strategy (ODSS). The initiative is being led by the CF, FIC, NIBIB, NIMH and NLM.  

    More information is available at https://commonfund.nih.gov/AfricaData.

    Photos depicting data science activities at awardee institutions are available for downloading at https://commonfund.nih.gov/africadata/images. 

    About the NIH Common Fund: The NIH Common Fund encourages collaboration and supports a series of exceptionally high-impact, trans-NIH programs. Common Fund programs are managed by the Office of Strategic Coordination in the Division of Program Coordination, Planning, and Strategic Initiatives in the NIH Office of the Director in partnership with the NIH Institutes, Centers, and Offices. More information is available at the Common Fund website: https://commonfund.nih.gov.

    About the National Institutes of Health (NIH): NIH, the nation’s medical research agency, includes 27 Institutes and Centers and is a component of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. NIH is the primary federal agency conducting and supporting basic, clinical, and translational medical research, and is investigating the causes, treatments, and cures for both common and rare diseases. For more information about NIH and its programs, visit www.nih.gov.

    NIH…Turning Discovery Into Health®

    Institute/Center